Comparison of methods for the detection of node group membership in bipartite networks

Most real-world networks considered in the literature have a modular structure. Analysis of these real-world networks often are performed under the assumption that there is only one type of node. However, social and biochemical systems are often bipartite networks, meaning that there are two exclusive sets of nodes, and that edges run exclusively between nodes belonging to different sets. Here we address the issue of module detection in bipartite networks by comparing the performance of two classes of group identification methods – modularity maximization and clique percolation – on an ensemble of modular random bipartite networks. We find that the modularity maximization methods are able to reliably detect the modular bipartite structure, and that, under some conditions, the simulated annealing method outperforms the spectral decomposition method. We also find that the clique percolation methods are not capable of reliably detecting the modular bipartite structure of the bipartite model networks considered.     

Robust outer synchronization between two complex networks with fractional order dynamics

Synchronization between two coupled complex networks with fractional-order dynamics, hereafter referred to as outer synchronization, is investigated in this work. In particular, we consider two systems consisting of interconnected nodes. The state variables of each node evolve with time according to a set of (possibly nonlinear and chaotic) fractional-order differential equations. One of the networks plays the role of a master system and drives the second network by way of an open-plus-closed-loop (OPCL) scheme. Starting from a simple analysis of the synchronization error and a basic lemma on the eigenvalues of matrices resulting from Kronecker products, we establish various sets of conditions for outer synchronization, i.e., for ensuring that the errors between the state variables of the master and response systems can asymptotically vanish with time. Then, we address the problem of robust outer synchronization, i.e., how to guarantee that the states of the nodes converge to common values when the parameters of the master and response networks are not identical, but present some perturbations. Assuming that these perturbations are bounded, we also find conditions for outer synchronization, this time given in terms of sets of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Most of the analytical results in this paper are valid both for fractional-order and integer-order dynamics. The assumptions on the inner (coupling) structure of the networks are mild, involving, at most, symmetry and diffusivity. The analytical results are complemented with numerical examples. In particular, we show examples of generalized and robust outer synchronization for networks whose nodes are governed by fractional-order Lorenz dynamics.     

An empirical study of Chinese language networks

Chinese is spoken by the largest number of people in the world, and it is regarded as one of the most important languages. In this paper, we explore the statistical properties of Chinese language networks (CLNs) within the framework of complex network theory. Based on one of the largest Chinese corpora, i.e. People’s Daily Corpus, we construct two networks (CLN1 and CLN2) from two different respects, with Chinese words as nodes. In CLN1, a link between two nodes exists if they appear next to each other in at least one sentence; in CLN2, a link represents that two nodes appear simultaneously in a sentence. We show that both networks exhibit small-world effect, scale-free structure, hierarchical organization and disassortative mixing. These results indicate that in many topological aspects Chinese language shapes complex networks with organizing principles similar to other previously studied language systems, which shows that different languages may have some common characteristics in their evolution processes. We believe that our research may shed some new light into the Chinese language and find some potentially significant implications.     

A general evolving model for growing bipartite networks

In this Letter, we propose and study an inner evolving bipartite network model. Significantly, we prove that the degree distribution of two different kinds of nodes both obey power-law form with adjustable exponents. Furthermore, the joint degree distribution of any two nodes for bipartite networks model is calculated analytically by the mean-field method. The result displays that such bipartite networks are nearly uncorrelated networks, which is different from one-mode networks. Numerical simulations and empirical results are given to verify the theoretical results.     

Preferential survival in models of complex ad hoc networks

There has been a rich interplay in recent years between (i) empirical investigations of real-world dynamic networks, (ii) analytical modeling of the microscopic mechanisms that drive the emergence of such networks, and (iii) harnessing of these mechanisms to either manipulate existing networks, or engineer new networks for specific tasks. We continue in this vein, and study the deletion phenomenon in the web by the following two different sets of websites (each comprising more than 150,000 pages) over a one-year period. Empirical data show that there is a significant deletion component in the underlying web networks, but the deletion process is not uniform. This motivates us to introduce a new mechanism of preferential survival (PS), where nodes are removed according to the degree-dependent deletion kernel, D(k)∝k^−α, with α≥0. We use the mean-field rate equation approach to study a general dynamic model driven by Preferential Attachment (PA), Double PA (DPA), and a tunable PS (i.e., with any α>0), where c nodes (c<1) are deleted per node added to the network, and verify our predictions via large-scale simulations. One of our results shows that, unlike in the case of uniform deletion (i.e., where α=0), the PS kernel when coupled with the standard PA mechanism, can lead to heavy-tailed power-law networks even in the presence of extreme turnover in the network. Moreover, a weak DPA mechanism, coupled with PS, can help to make the network even more heavy-tailed, especially in the limit when deletion and insertion rates are almost equal, and the overall network growth is minimal. The dynamics reported in this work can be used to design and engineer stable ad hoc networks and explain the stability of the power-law exponents observed in real-world networks.     

Efficient overlapping community detection in huge real-world networks

The detection of overlapping community structure in networks can give insight into the structures and functions of many complex systems. In this paper, we propose a simple but efficient overlapping community detection method for very large real-world networks. Taking a high-quality, non-overlapping partition generated by existing, efficient, non-overlapping community detection methods as input, our method identifies overlapping nodes between each pair of connected non-overlapping communities in turn. Through our analysis on modularity, we deduce that, to become an overlapping node without demolishing modularity, nodes should satisfy a specific condition presented in this paper. The proposed algorithm outputs high quality overlapping communities by efficiently identifying overlapping nodes that satisfy the above condition. Experiments on synthetic and real-world networks show that in most cases our method is better than other algorithms either in the quality of results or the computational performance. In some cases, our method is the only one that can produce overlapping communities in the very large real-world networks used in the experiments.     

PageRank centrality for temporal networks

In this paper, we propose a new centrality measure for ranking the nodes and time layers of temporal networks simultaneously, referred to as the f-PageRank centrality. The f-PageRank values of nodes and time layers in temporal networks are obtained by solving the eigenvector of a multi-homogeneous map. The existence and uniqueness of the proposed centrality measure are also guaranteed by existing results, under some reasonable conditions. The numerical experiments on a synthetic temporal network and two real-world temporal networks (i.e., Email-Eu-core and CollegeMsg temporal networks) show that the proposed centrality outperforms some existing centrality measures.     

Pair correlations in scale-free networks

Correlation between nodes is found to be a common and important property in many complex networks. Here we investigate degree correlations of the Barabasi－Albert (BA) scale-free model with both analytical results and simulations, and find two neighbouring regions, a disassortative one for low degrees and a neutral one for high degrees. The average degree of the neighbours of a randomly picked node is expected to diverge in the limit of infinite network size. As a generalization of the concept of correlation, we also study the correlations of other scalar properties, including age and clustering coefficient. Finally we propose a correlation measurement in bipartite networks.     

Scaling of weighted spectral distribution in weighted small-world networks

Many real-world systems can be modeled by weighted small-world networks with high clustering coefficients. Recent studies for rigorously analyzing the weighted spectral distribution(W SD) have focused on unweighted networks with low clustering coefficients. In this paper, we rigorously analyze the W SD in a deterministic weighted scale-free small-world network model and find that the W SD grows sublinearly with increasing network order(i.e., the number of nodes) and provides a sensitive discrimination for each input of this model. This study demonstrates that the scaling feature of the W SD exists in the weighted network model which has high and order-independent clustering coefficients and reasonable power-law exponents.     

Motif structure and cooperation in real-world complex networks

Networks of dynamical nodes serve as generic models for real-world systems in many branches of science ranging from mathematics to physics, technology, sociology and biology. Collective behavior of agents interacting over complex networks is important in many applications. The cooperation between selfish individuals is one of the most interesting collective phenomena. In this paper we address the interplay between the motifs’ cooperation properties and their abundance in a number of real-world networks including yeast protein-protein interaction, human brain, protein structure, email communication, dolphins’ social interaction, Zachary karate club and Net-science coauthorship networks. First, the amount of cooperativity for all possible undirected subgraphs with three to six nodes is calculated. To this end, the evolutionary dynamics of the Prisoner’s Dilemma game is considered and the cooperativity of each subgraph is calculated as the percentage of cooperating agents at the end of the simulation time. Then, the three- to six-node motifs are extracted for each network. The significance of the abundance of a motif, represented by a Z-value, is obtained by comparing them with some properly randomized versions of the original network. We found that there is always a group of motifs showing a significant inverse correlation between their cooperativity amount and Z-value, i.e. the more the Z-value the less the amount of cooperativity. This suggests that networks composed of well-structured units do not have good cooperativity properties.     

Communities in Italian corporate networks

The community structure of two real-world financial networks, namely the board network and the ownership network of the firms of the Italian Stock Exchange, is analyzed by means of the maximum modularity approach. The main result is that both networks exhibit a strong community structure and, moreover, that the two structures overlap significantly. This is due to a number of reasons, including the existence of pyramidal groups and directors serving in several boards. Overall, this means that the “small world” of listed companies is actually split into well identifiable “continents” (i.e., the communities).     

Studies on controllability of directed networks with extremal optimization

Almost all natural, social and man-made-engineered systems can be represented by a complex network to describe their dynamic behaviors. To make a real-world complex network controllable with its desired topology, the study on network controllability has been one of the most critical and attractive subjects for both network and control communities. In this paper, based on a given directed–weighted network with both state and control nodes, a novel optimization tool with extremal dynamics to generate an optimal network topology with minimum control nodes and complete controllability under Kalman’s rank condition has been developed. The experimental results on a number of popular benchmark networks show the proposed tool is effective to identify the minimum control nodes which are sufficient to guide the whole network’s dynamics and provide the evolution of network topology during the optimization process. We also find the conclusion: “the sparse networks need more control nodes than the dense, and the homogeneous networks need fewer control nodes compared to the heterogeneous” (Liu et al., 2011  [18]), is also applicable to network complete controllability. These findings help us to understand the network dynamics and make a real-world network under the desired control. Moreover, compared with the relevant research results on structural controllability with minimum driver nodes, the proposed solution methodology may also be applied to other constrained network optimization problems beyond complete controllability with minimum control nodes.     

Classes of complex networks defined by role-to-role connectivity profiles

In physical, biological, technological and social systems, interactions between units give rise to intricate networks. These-typically non-trivial-structures, in turn, critically affect the dynamics and properties of the system. The focus of most current research on complex networks is, still, on global network properties. A caveat of this approach is that the relevance of global properties hinges on the premise that networks are homogeneous, whereas most real-world networks have a markedly modular structure. Here, we report that networks with different functions, including the Internet, metabolic, air transportation and protein interaction networks, have distinct patterns of connections among nodes with different roles, and that, as a consequence, complex networks can be classified into two distinct functional classes on the basis of their link type frequency. Importantly, we demonstrate that these structural features cannot be captured by means of often studied global properties.     

Identifying influential nodes based on graph signal processing in complex networks

Identifying influential nodes in complex networks is of both theoretical and practical importance. Existing methods identify influential nodes based on their positions in the network and assume that the nodes are homogeneous. However,node heterogeneity(i.e., different attributes such as interest, energy, age, and so on) ubiquitously exists and needs to be taken into consideration. In this paper, we conduct an investigation into node attributes and propose a graph signal processing based centrality(GSPC) method to identify influential nodes considering both the node attributes and the network topology. We first evaluate our GSPC method using two real-world datasets. The results show that our GSPC method effectively identifies influential nodes, which correspond well with the underlying ground truth. This is compatible to the previous eigenvector centrality and principal component centrality methods under circumstances where the nodes are homogeneous. In addition, spreading analysis shows that the GSPC method has a positive effect on the spreading dynamics.     

Nodes and layers PageRank centrality for multilayer networks

In this paper, we propose a new centrality algorithm that can simultaneously rank the nodes and layers of multilayer networks, referred to as the MRFNL centrality. The centrality of nodes and layers are obtained by developing a novel iterative algorithm for computing a set of tensor equations. Under some conditions, the existence and uniqueness of this centrality were proven by applying the Brouwer fixed point theorem. Furthermore, the convergence of the proposed iterative algorithm was established. Finally, numerical experiments on a simple multilayer network and two real-world multilayer networks(i.e., Pierre Auger Collaboration and European Air Transportation Networks) are proposed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and to compare it to other existing centrality measures.     

Clustering coefficient and community structure of bipartite networks

Many real-world networks display natural bipartite structure, where the basic cycle is a square. In this paper, with the similar consideration of standard clustering coefficient in binary networks, a definition of the clustering coefficient for bipartite networks based on the fraction of squares is proposed. In order to detect community structures in bipartite networks, two different edge clustering coefficients LC₄ and LC₃ of bipartite networks are defined, which are based on squares and triples respectively. With the algorithm of cutting the edge with the least clustering coefficient, communities in artificial and real world networks are identified. The results reveal that investigating bipartite networks based on the original structure can show the detailed properties that is helpful to get deep understanding about the networks.     

Random graph models for dynamic networks

Recent theoretical work on the modeling of network structure has focused primarily on networks that are static and unchanging, but many real-world networks change their structure over time. There exist natural generalizations to the dynamic case of many static network models, including the classic random graph, the configuration model, and the stochastic block model, where one assumes that the appearance and disappearance of edges are governed by continuous-time Markov processes with rate parameters that can depend on properties of the nodes. Here we give an introduction to this class of models, showing for instance how one can compute their equilibrium properties. We also demonstrate their use in data analysis and statistical inference, giving efficient algorithms for fitting them to observed network data using the method of maximum likelihood. This allows us, for example, to estimate the time constants of network evolution or infer community structure from temporal network data using cues embedded both in the probabilities over time that node pairs are connected by edges and in the characteristic dynamics of edge appearance and disappearance. We illustrate these methods with a selection of applications, both to computer-generated test networks and real-world examples.     

二分网上的靴襻渗流

靴襻渗流最早应用于统计物理学中研究磁铁因非磁性杂质导致磁有序的降低并最终消失的现象. 随着复杂网络研究的深入, 许多学者展开网络上的靴襻渗流研究. 在自然界中, 许多系统自然呈现出二分结构, 二分网络是复杂网络中的一种重要的网络模式. 本文通过建立动力学方程和计算机仿真模拟的方法研究二分网上的靴襻渗流, 关注的参数是二分网中两类节点初始的活跃比例和活跃阈值, 分别用f₁, f₂和Ω₁, Ω₂表示, 得到二分网两类节点终态活跃比例随初始活跃比例的变化会发生相变等结论. 同时 验证了动力学方程与仿真模拟的一致性.     

Detecting community structure in complex networks via node similarity

The detection of the community structure in networks is beneficial to understand the network structure and to analyze the network properties. Based on node similarity, a fast and efficient method for detecting community structure is proposed, which discovers the community structure by iteratively incorporating the community containing a node with the communities that contain the nodes with maximum similarity to this node to form a new community. The presented method has low computational complexity because of requiring only the local information of the network, and it does not need any prior knowledge about the communities and its detection results are robust on the selection of the initial node. Some real-world and computer-generated networks are used to evaluate the performance of the presented method. The simulation results demonstrate that this method is efficient to detect community structure in complex networks, and the ZLZ metrics used in the proposed method is the most suitable one among local indices in community detection.     

二元随机网

在二分网的基础上明确提出了二元网的概念：同样包含两类节点,二分网同类节点之间没有连接,而二元网同类节点之间可以有连接.构建了一个二元随机网模型,并对二元随机网的结构性质进行研究.二元随机网可以具有小世界效应,并且其平均最短路径长度比单元随机网还要小.另外,两类节点的规模比是一个重要参量,会对网络的结构性质产生重大影响. 关键词： 复杂网络 二分网 二元网 小世界